overcoming the scholarship process.

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In elementary, teachers tell you that you better get your act together because come middle school, there is not going to be anymore recess. In truth, middle school is not that bad; most teachers will still give out “three strikes,” and they acknowledge that students are going through a learning curve.

In middle school, teachers tell you that you for real better get your act together because come high school, teachers are no longer going to be so lenient. In truth, I snacked in a lot of my high school classes, and my teachers were very approachable. If anything, the older I got in high school, the more lenient my teachers became.

In high school, teachers tell you that you like no but seriously this time better get your act together because come college, things are going to be a lot less free and you’re going to wish you paid more attention in class so you could accumulate college credit pre-college. In truth, they are 100% accurate.

College is expensive. We all know it, some of us do not understand why, and the rest of us just accept it. But what good does that do? What are we supposed to do about it? The answer?

Apply for scholarships.

Yes, the dreaded S word, and if you don’t make an effort to deal with it, you’ll probably find yourself dealing with that other S word. But read on, and by the end, you may still find yourself SOL, but at least the idea of scholarships will not be so foreign of a topic anymore.

my experience

Having an older sister, I got the benefit of watching her get reamed out by my parents regarding how to pay for college, giving me about a year head start in preparing for how I was going to deal with the expense. Yet, no matter how early you start or how prepared you feel going into the process, you’re going to feel like you’re drowning during it.

Junior and Senior year, not only are you worrying about how you’re going to get your grades high enough for college admissions from those few-but-really-many times that you slacked off Freshman and Sophomore year, you have to deal with the *bum bum bum* SAT/ACT which, mind colleges recruiters, require a completely different curriculum than what you are learning in Advanced Biology or British Literature or Macroeconomics. To add worse on top of worse, you have to stress about AP exams, or if you are like me and are in the International Baccalaureate Program, you have to deal with IB Exams and your TOK essay and your EE and unending IAs and any other acronym you can think of because those IB folk really like the alphabet.

Going into your senior year, you have to add college applications to the mountain of responsibilities you already have, and no college application is the same. You can say a big thanks for nothing to ApplyTexas and CommonApp, because while they both make applying for college mildly easier, every college still has their own questions and their own additional material that they want you to provide and, for some reason, as broad as those essay or short answer questions are, none of them are the same. I’m sure all colleges secretly communicate with one another on who gets to include what question in their college application even though it’s not like they can see what you submit to other colleges. Wack.

So how on earth do they expect you to worry about applying for scholarships? If you think college apps are hard, scholarship applications are steel. They are ugly, weigh on you, and there are so many that they almost seem worthless of your time. I said almost.

Don’t discredit applying for scholarships. Scholarships are the reason I was able to go into my freshman year not spending a dime — for school, at least. I definitely spent a stack or two trying all of Austin’s amazing cuisine (and by that I mean late night runs to Pluckers, oops). In fact, my university paid me. Amazing right?

Let me start off by saying that you will likely get more rejections than you get awards. This does mean a lot of your time is “wasted” but not really, because the awards that you do get are in the hundreds, if not thousands. It’s important to know this reality going into the process because all of the rejections can really take a toll on your motivation. I’m telling you, do NOT give up. The more scholarship applications you write, the better you get at BSing essays better a writer you become.

In all seriousness though, your writing will get better and with a growth in your writing, the more likely it is that you get the next scholarship. Writing also helps you with interviewing, which some of your scholarships may require.

before starting

Once you begin applying, it is most important that you STAY ORGANIZED. (Pretend that there are stars and blinking lights and a Jennifer Lopez dancing around that, because it is just that important.) Applying for scholarships is a time consuming task. First, there is all the effort you put in having to read through which scholarships you are even eligible for. Then each app has their own requirements, their own dates for when apps go live, and their own due dates.

Before you begin searching for scholarships, make a table. If you don’t know Excel or Google Sheets, you’re going to have to suck it up and get familiar real fast. Put all the information that you think would be imperative to know in the columns. This will allow you to keep track of all the scholarships and quickly order them by app opening/closing dates if you need to. Below is an example of a table I made on excel.

If you do not have excel, you can download a Google Sheets version here. Both versions are a view-only copy, so you will have to save the file to your drive or computer before you can begin editing it.

Another note, to differentiate between scholarships you have and have not completed yet, you can either add a “completed” column and put a Y/N format there, or you can highlight the row of the scholarships you have completed. I would not advise deleting the scholarships from your table until you have heard back from them. This way, you can keep track of which scholarships you have applied to.

finding scholarships

Whether you believe it or not, there are hundreds of scholarships out there for almost anything you can think of. The key is finding which scholarships you would be eligible for.

start with your school/district

The more local the scholarship, the more likely you are to get it. Most districts offer scholarships for their students. Scholarships can be even more narrowed and be offered only for seniors at your high school. Don’t forget to look into your middle school and elementary as well. They may have scholarships set aside for alumni or have an outside donor who offers a scholarship to students of those schools.

For those of you in CFBISD, here is the district scholarship list: CFBISD Scholarships

The scholarships may be for relatively small amounts, but these scholarships add up quick. Just from my district and school, I was awarded five scholarships totaling to $4,500:

• RHS StucCo: $500
• BBMS PTA: $500
• “Best of the West Endowment”: $250
• Prithvi Scholarship: $1,250
• Dallas Capital Bank Scholarship: $2,500 *this application required an interview
• I received a scholarship from my orchestra too, but I forgot for how much, and this award was in cash. (IKR, boss)

Check out scholarships in your local community for talents you have as well. I also was awarded a scholarship from Farmers Branch Carrollton Art Association for my art portfolio, which totaled to roughly $1,700. However, I ended up not actually receiving this scholarship due to choosing to major in Business and not in Visual Arts.

ask your counselors for help

My high school has a “Student Services” office, where one of the administrators put together a weekly report of scholarships she found. I am utterly grateful for her efforts, so those of you at RHS, make it easier for yourself and don’t put Ms. Erlenbusch’s efforts to waste. You will have to periodically check her “scholarship board,” where she posts all of the scholarships, but her list is extensive.

I probably applied to at least 10 scholarship applications that she had found. Though I did not get most, I was able to get two scholarships that totaled to $6,000 for freshman year, but $21,000+ over my college career:

• Dallas Scottish Rite Museum: $1,000 (currently closed for 2020 graduates, so 2021+ graduates check back here)
• Charles, Lela and Mary Slough Scholarship: $2,500 PER semester for up to 5 years (Deadline for this year is June 1, 2020, so seniors OR current college students apply here)

look into your local community (city and state)

Many times you can find companies nearby that are giving out scholarships. The best companies to start searching are corporations. Many banks and law firms have scholarships that they give out to students. Additionally, check into local medical practices, as they may be offering scholarships as well.

Do not doubt yourself and not apply for a scholarship just because you feel like the odds are against you. The true odds are that there are less students applying for said scholarship than you think due to them 1) not knowing about it, 2) not having the time to complete it, or 3) doubting their odds for receiving the scholarship and, thus, not applying.

One of the scholarships that I received was open to all IB Candidates in the state of TX and there are 91 IB Schools in TX. However, apparently not many people apply for this scholarship, because out of the literally only a handful of students they award, a few students from my high school had been awarded the scholarship in the recent past. I received $1,000 from the TX IB Schools Scholarship, and all I remember having to submit was a one page paper about how IB had benefitted me.

check with your university and their alumni

While this many be difficult if you are applying to multiple colleges, many times universities will offer scholarships to their students. Sometimes this requires a separate application than your admissions application, sometimes the applications are the same, and sometimes they only require an additional question (or two) or document (or two).

If you are like me and are going to UT, chances are you won’t get a scholarship from UT. UT has a bank of scholarships they offer. However, they are more extreme than extremely hard to get. Do not let this put you down, though. I would still recommend applying to the Terry Scholarship and the holy grail that is the Forty-Acres Scholarship, because your chances of getting it will be zero if you do not.

On the positive side, UT’s alumni are more forgiving. You can check out the Texas Exes Scholarships offered or also look into the local alumni chapter for your city. I was able to secure a renewable scholarship from the UT Dallas Chapter worth $2,000 per year.

look at scholarship banks as a last resort

If you have exhausted all of the resources from above, you can look into scholarship banks. I do not say that these sites are a last resort because the scholarships are hard to get, but it is more likely and easier to get a scholarship from your local community.

Here are a few of the big, general scholarship banks:

apply for FAFSA

Finally, while not a scholarship, apply for FAFSA. The worse that they can tell you is that you will not be getting any money. Additionally, there are many scholarships that do require the Student Aid Report from FAFSA. Many universities use FAFSA to determine what financial-based scholarships to give you as well.

On a side note, if you are receiving need-based financial aid directly from your university due to your FAFSA showing need, getting scholarships may reduce this aid. I would talk more about it, but that’s a whole other topic. Just know that, no, there is no way to get around this. You cannot just not report scholarships to your university. It will just screw you later on.

Also note, the amount of scholarship money you receive cannot exceed what your university estimates as your average cost of attendance (which includes an estimate for how much you would have to spend for tuition/housing/textbooks/miscellaneous). So, if you are awarded more scholarships than this estimate, be prepared for some of that money to be sent back to the scholarship provider from your university.

acing the essay

I realized this part was doubling the length of this post, so you can read more about how to write that scholarship-winning essay in my next post: Acing The Scholarship Essay.